‘I intend to support white rule’ 
Ian Hamilton
- Allen Tate: Orphan of the South by Thomas Underwood
When Allen Tate died in 1979, Simon and Schuster speedily commissioned a biography, to be written, they announced, by Ned O’Gorman, a poet of some reputation and a friend of two of Tate’s three wives. O’Gorman, it would seem, got going in the usual way, writing to all the obvious Tate contacts and attempting to interview key intimates. He also trawled through at least some of the vast cache of Tate material (57 boxes, 30 cubic feet) that sits in Princeton’s Firestone Library – sold to the university by Tate in 1967. By the mid-1980s, O’Gorman felt ready to put pen to paper: ‘So one day the biographer has enough to begin. And he begins to write and discovers, as I have discovered, that lies, deceptions, half-truths, fake truths, family loyalties, friendships, literary feuds get in the way and render even a birth date suspect.’
Subscribers to the print edition can log in to view the entire article. For information about subscribing to the London Review of Books click here. This article is available for purchase online. Buy this article.
From the LRB letters page: [ 7 June 2001 ] Stan Smith.
Ian Hamilton contributed many exact, funny and unsparing pieces on poetry, on novels - and on football - to the LRB. He died on 27 December 2001.
Other articles by this contributor:
Snoop Doggy Dogg for Laureate · Poets Laureate
France ’98 · Ian Hamilton watches the World Cup
The Power of Des · Ian Hamilton writes about the screen rights to English Premier League Football
Sorry to go on like this · Kingsley Amis
How much? · literary pay and literary prizes
print layout
tell a friend